


Sleeping Beneath Our Beds

by quantumlittlecat



Series: Soulmate Oneshots [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Slow Build, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 02:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19032655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumlittlecat/pseuds/quantumlittlecat
Summary: 5 time the Asset and Natalia aren't soulmates, and 1 time Bucky and Natasha are.





	Sleeping Beneath Our Beds

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I am REALLY bending the soulmates concept here with the Natalia/Natasha schtick that is really common in fandom. We're just gonna pretend that Red Room Natalia (her birth name) and Natasha are distinct in the same way that Bucky and the Winter Soldier are distinct. Bear with me here.
> 
> Title inspired by this line from Andrea Gibson's poem Truce: I know how much time we spend sleeping beneath our beds because somebody told us that’s where the monsters should hide.   
> Poem here if you're curious: https://ohandreagibson.tumblr.com/post/64926422342/truce-i-was-little-my-mother-was-a-bank

1

She’s always been markless. Most of the girls here are, only a few have greyed out words that denote a dead soulmate. She’s content to be, it’s less distracting this way. She knows Masha sometimes thinks about what could have been, but to think like that would only be a detriment. She sees it now in Masha’s form, sloppier than her own, as they spar on the thin mats of the training area.

Natalia kicks out at Masha, striking her squarely in the chest. Masha recovers, and tries to strike back. Natalia dodges easily, but she can feel a new set of eyes on her. She doesn’t linger on that thought, and instead moves to pin Masha. She hopes it’s him. He’s never seen her spar before, and she wants desperately to be his protege, though she would never admit it. She and Masha roll about on the mat, but Natalia can feel the other girl losing steam. She smiles inwardly. For so long Masha has been the top girl in their cohort, mostly because of her size. But no one matches Natalia in determination and work and ethic, and it’s starting to show. She has the quickest reflexes, the most convincing English, the best aim at the range, the best flexibility and pointe work, and, should she pin Masha, the best hand to hand skills. 

In a split second, Natalia sees her opening, and doesn’t hesitate to take it, moving Masha’s arm at a terrible angle until she hears a pop. Masha’s arm goes limp, and with the upper hand, Natalia quickly has her pinned.

“Excellent Natalia,” their supervisor says, without a hint of emotion. “Masha, get the arm set before the next block. And next time, don’t let such such an injury stop you from continuing.” Masha nods, keeping her head low, embarrassed as she scuttles out of the training area. Natalia makes her way over to one of the benches on the side of the room, and begins to take stock of her injuries. She watches him from the corner of her eye. The Asset. She’d hoped it was him. He watches the other girls spar and train, face blank. She sneaks a quick glance at him, and he motions her over to him.

Her heart soars. She pads silently over to him, where he’s standing ramrod straight next to the door. He looks at her appraisingly. She schools her face and body into an expression of obedience.

“Your technique when you strike with your left leg is sloppy.” Natalia is crushed, but keeps her expression fixed.

“Yes sir. I’ll fix it.”

He nods and walks briskly out of the training area.

 

2

She takes care to bandage the ribs properly. The last thing she needs is an injury that continues to plague her. There’s only five of them left, and she knows that any weakness will get her killed. 

She feels his presence before she sees him, and before he speaks. He’s been lurking around her more lately, watching her in class, observing her. Everyone thinks he’ll get a protege soon, but Natalia is doubtful.

“Don’t let them know how badly you’re hurt, it makes Olesia looks stronger.” He says, uncharacteristically soft. 

“Yes sir.” He’s gone before she’s gathered her things for ballet.

 

3

The sniper’s nest is freezing, and they’ve been nearly motionless for hours now. Natalia is grateful, she is, to be his protege, his chosen successor, but she’s not as patient as she thought she was. Though some of that could be attributed to still being a teenager. She exhales hard through her nose.

“Your temperament requires work,” he murmurs, his breath barely making a cloud in the freezing air. He hasn’t moved in hours, not even to adjust. Sometimes she wonders if he’s even breathing.

“You can’t compare me to yourself,” she hisses, voice low. “You’re hardly human,” she says to herself, so quiet she’s certain no human could hear her.

“You’ll be like this soon,” he remarks, eyes still fixed ahead. She says nothing, and instead casts her eyes upwards, gazing at the Siberian sky, full of stars.

 

4

She’s nervous, but she knows it doesn’t show. She packs her bags, for what she knows is the last time. Walking through the compound, she silently says goodbye. She’s the only one left now, and soon there’ll be none. Everything is emptier than it once was. There’s only ghosts now.

Loaded down with her gear bags, she pauses in front of the old ballet room. She hasn’t danced in what feels like years. The first time she was in that room, everything felt so bright, so hopeful. There were so many of them then, but she can’t remember their names or their faces. They simply exist as faceless figures in her memories of this place.

He’s waiting for her on the tarmac, halfway between her and the helicopter. He motions her over, and she knows that he knows. His eyes seem, different. Not sad, she’s known him long enough to know he’s not capable of that. But, different.

“I know…” he trails off, looking down at her. But she won’t be swayed.

“You know nothing,” she says coldly, and pushes past him to the chopper.

 

5

She knows he’s watching her through his scope, he can feel his presence just as well as when she was twelve years old in the Red Room, the first time he ever spoke to her. She moves to shield the target she’s extracting. She turns her gaze to where she knows he is, her sense of him has never been wrong, and before she has time to process it, a bullet has ripped through her side with a searing pain, and into the target behind her, killing him. She looks from the dead body behind her back to where she’s certain he’s perched.

“Fuck you,” she snarls in a moment of uncharacteristically open rage. She knows he can hear her, knows how good his hearing has been made. Her’s is not so enhanced, but as she moves to stem the bleeding in her side, she’s certain she hears him say something. She’s just not sure what.

 

1

After the Insight incident and the fall of the Triskelion, Natasha spends a lot of time working, well, more than usual. Her life feels like an endless cycle of mission, eat, sleep, repeat. It’s not until months later that she takes a break, mostly at the insistence of Steve. Even on a mini-vacation, she can’t sleep, and finds herself in the gym, running on the treadmill like her life depends on it. When she’s sufficiently exhausted, she hops off, pulling her sweat drenched top off. She sees it out of the corner of her eye and stops dead in tracks.  _ It can’t be. _ She steps closer to the mirror, not quite believing her eyes. But it’s there. 

_ I know you have a damn good reason to, but could you stop avoiding me? _

It’s scrawled hastily on her lower back, curling towards her right hip. She doesn’t recognize the handwriting. And for the first time since she was a child, she feels fear. The images crawl into her mind unbidden. The girl, faceless and nameless in Natasha’s memory, maybe eight years old. The words had appeared overnight. Natalia standing at attention with the other girls, silent, trying not to flinch, as the lead instructor cut the girl’s throat, all of them forced to watch her twitching in an ever expanding puddle of her own blood. Natasha knows the dying girl’s eyes haunted her weeks, the light fading from them until they were glassy and still. She can’t remember what the other girl’s eyes looked like, not anymore anyways. She’s seen that look hundreds of times since then.

Natasha catches her breath, and focuses on her own, very much alive eyes in the mirror.  The visceral fear of being killed for having words is easily brushed away as a childish fear, something she doesn’t have to worry about anymore. But the deeper, more insidious fear remains. Rejection, unworthiness, self disgust, all swirl through her mind. She looks into her own eyes more intently.

_ Get over it. Keep moving. _

And she does. She keeps it from her mind, continues to do what she does best. Occasionally she’ll find herself wondering about it, but pushes the thought far from her mind with vicious force. She’s made it this far without a soul mate, she doesn’t need one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For a long time after he pulls the man from the river -  _ Steve _ , he reminds himself - he doesn’t take notice of himself. He still feels like a disembodied force piloting a body. It takes him nearly a month to start feeding himself properly. All these years he never felt hunger. They had always taken care of that. Rediscovering what foods he likes is an oddly nostalgic endeavor, and he finds himself eating a great deal of apple pie. The more he grooms himself, showers, combs his hair, the more integrated he feels his mind become with his body. But he never lingers. He never looks too long or too close. He still treats his body like a machine to operate, and as he heals too quickly to need to bandage wounds, he doesn’t pay attention.

He doesn’t notice it until he steps out of the shower in a ratty hotel outside Lander, Wyoming. He lifts his normal arm up to pull his hair up, and he sees it. Dark marks on the inside of his bicep. He steps closer to examine them. It’s been hours since his last fight, anything should be long healed by now. They’re words. Written in blocky print, he runs his finger over them delicately. He’s not sure what they mean, or how they got there, but they comfort him, and for now, that’s enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She’s been so careful to ignore the mark, so determined to ignore it, that she becomes less careful in other ways. She’s sitting on the floor of the Quinjet in just a sports bra, patching up a nasty shrapnel cut on her stomach, when she hears someone come in behind her. She can tell by the pace weight it’s Steve, the second to make it back. She turns around quickly, pulling her shirt back over her head with staggering speed. But she knows he’s seen it. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, she stops him.

“Drop it. You didn’t see anything.” He looks ready to disagree, but he stops himself. He’s oddly distant after that.

It’s months later that Steve brings him in. Steve calls him Bucky, but she knows him by his other name. The Asset. And she knows what he’s done. What they’ve done, the two of them, perched in their sniper’s nest, taking out the good guys, one by one, mercilessly, without hesitation. What’s worse is that he knows her. Really, truly, knows her. Not the sanitized, redeemed Natasha who fights for the right team, slowly but surely erasing the red from her ledger. He knows Natalia. The girl who broke other children’s bones for the approval of her instructor, the girl who stabbed and shot and tortured on command, the girl who stood silently and watched the murder of someone who called her their friend.

So she avoids him. Religiously. She’s aware of where he is at all times, and makes sure their paths never cross. It’s better this way. To be known is to be weak and unloved. As good as she is at avoiding him, he’s better at tracking her down. He finally catches up to her after months of her avoidance. He appears behind her at the gym, in the middle of the night. She knows he’s there, but figures that avoiding him in the same room must be possible. She doesn’t turn to face him, doesn’t look at him in the mirror, and says nothing.

“I know you have a damn good reason to, but could you stop avoiding me?” She freezes for a fraction of second before continuing with her exercise. She’s silent for a moment, composing herself before she turns to him.

“How can it be you? I’ve known you my whole life.” She asks bluntly. They look at eachother, baffled, for a moment. Then he smiles ever so slightly. She’s never in her life seen him do that before, didn’t think he was capable.

“Well, you didn’t know me then, you knew…him.” he trails off. And then it clicks in Natasha’s brain.

“When we met, we were The Asset and Natalia, and now…” she struggles to find the words, “we’re not,” she finishes lamely.

“Should we re-introduce ourselves then?” He asks good-naturedly. Natasha pauses for a minute, taking it in, wanting to be sure of herself. He knows her, that much is certain, but he’s certainly not the man that she knew. Perhaps in his mind, she’s not the woman he knew. Maybe she isn’t Natalia in his eyes. Maybe she can just be Natasha. She extends her hand out to him, steeling herself.

“Natasha,” she says. He clasps her hand firmly, but far less aggressively than she had expected from him.

“Bucky,” he says warmly.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!


End file.
